Apparatus for diagnosing breast cancer, the apparatus comprising a controller having a set of instructions executable to: acquire a contrast enhanced region of interest (CE-ROI) in an X-ray image of a patient's breast, the X-ray image comprising X-ray pixels that indicate intensity of X-rays that passed through the breast to generate the image; determine a texture neighborhood for each of a plurality of X-ray pixels in the CE-ROI, the texture neighborhood for a given X-ray pixel of the plurality of X-ray pixels extending to a bounding pixel radius of BPR pixels from the given pixel; generate a texture feature vector (TF) having components based on the indications of intensity provided by a plurality of X-ray pixels in the CE-ROI that are located within the texture neighborhood; and use a classifier to classify the texture feature vector TF to determine whether the CE-ROI is malignant.
Legal claims defining the scope of protection, as filed with the USPTO.
3. The method according to claim 1 and comprising processing the X-ray image to determine a contour for the CE-ROI.
4. The method according to claim 3 and comprising determining a contour feature vector CF based on the determined contour and concatenating the texture feature vector TF and the contour feature vector CF to provide a feature vector CF-TF.
5. The method according to claim 4 and comprising using the feature vector CF-TF to determine whether the CE-ROI is malignant.
6. The method according to claim 1 and comprising generating a Breast Imaging Reporting and Data System (BIRADS) Lexicon Classification System code for the CE-ROI to provide an indication as to whether the CE-ROI comprises a malignancy.
7. The method according to claim 1 wherein the wherein the classifier comprises a support vector machine and/or a neural network.
8. The method according to claim 1 wherein the X-ray image is a spectral contrast enhanced digital mammography (SCEDM) image.
9. A non-transitory computer-readable medium comprising stored thereon executable instructions that are executable to perform the method of claim 1.
11. The method according to claim 10 wherein the time dependent feature comprises a rate of increase of a contrast agent taken up by tissue imaged in the CE-ROI.
12. The method according to claim 10 wherein the time dependent feature comprises a rate of decrease of a contrast agent washed out from tissue imaged in the CE-ROI.
13. The method according to claim 10 and comprising generating a Breast Imaging Reporting and Data System (BIRADS) Lexicon Classification System code for the CE-ROI to provide an indication as to whether the CE-ROI comprises a malignancy.
14. The method according to claim 10 wherein the wherein the classifier comprises a support vector machine and/or a neural network.
15. The method according to claim 10 wherein the X-ray image is a spectral contrast enhanced digital mammography (SCEDM) image.
16. A non-transitory computer-readable medium comprising stored thereon executable instructions that are executable to perform the method of claim 10.
18. A non-transitory computer-readable medium comprising stored thereon executable instructions that are executable to perform the method of claim 17.
Cooperative Patent Classification codes for this invention. Click any code to explore related patents in that topic.
February 1, 2021
December 27, 2022
Browse 5M+ US patents with plain-English claim translations and AI-generated analysis.